Bender
I wonder if this was partially inspired by the Bender/Vernon dynamic in the Breakfast Club, which was also written by John Hughes. There are a couple of scenes that hearken back to the janitor's closet scene in TBC.
actually you're on the right path.
In interviews, Hughes said that the romantic teenage idyll proclaimed in TBC's finale was a momentary notion unrealistic for the harsh cold world of adults... He admitted that Reach the Rock was his way of revisiting these characters a decade later.
After his tacky 90s excesses (big budget CGFX flicks for young families w/ toddlers), Hughes missed the simplicity and purity of his cinematic roots, particularly Breakfast Club's minimalism. So he wrote this script aiming for the lowest budget possible, arranging a tiny cast on simple sets, and produced the movie while sitting next to his assistant who then "directed" it according to John's vision. (I'm not sure why they chose this arrangement, since the movie is clearly Hughes', and we haven't seen much since of his assistant)
Reach the Rock was filmed in the mid-90s, with the 2 leads serving as modern sort-of "fill-in" replacements for Bender and Claire. If a Claire type of girl grew up and moved on with her life, and a Bender-kinda guy refused to let go of the temporary ray of sunshine that once had given him a taste of optimism, no matter how much nostalgia they shared even during a one-night reunion, would ever fully restore past innocence. This was straight from Hughes' heart.
Unfortunately, in the late 90s world, audiences were impatient for such simple human stories, thus test-market reviews were terrible for this odd indie. Since John Hughes will never be respected in art-house cinemas, the studio sat Reach the Rock on a shelf until finally dumping it. Only a few of us have seen it on cable or VHS, while most the world has no idea it exists.
RtR is the best "art" Hughes made during the 90s, but after its cold reception and various expensive fizzles (his ambitious agendas never got financed in Hollywood - he wanted to work w/ Tom Hanks to do Forrest Gump type quality) he retired to his secluded estate in Illinois, happy to relax farming and fishing w/ his wife, no longer bothering to share his creativity with the world.
Meanwhile, Universal still sits on 90 minutes of deleted scenes from Breakfast Club, never bothering to load the DVD w/ the treasure chest of available material. There's also an hour missing from Planes Trains & Automobiles, and tons of material cut from his other movies as well.
Wow, thanks so much for the reply.
That totally makes sense.
I hear you on the ending of TBC. As a fan however I cannot see it any other way. I think that in a lot of ways our teenage years are a product of reality and selective memory. In that regard I think that the ending is entirely appropriate. I always felt that John Hughes was a glass half full type of guy in a glass half empty world and his movies (at least ones from the 80s and early 90s) were a reflection of that.
John Hughes' work has had a monumental (I'm not kidding) influence on my life and countless other lives, I truly hope he continues to make movies for himself and the fans and not for studios and critics.
90 more minutes of TBC is amazing. Hopefully the studio will wake up soon and release a special edition. I noticed that they are finally releasing a decent version of Apocalypse Now. It's about time.....
John's one of my favorites, too.
But he got flustered when Hollywood rejected his version of The Grinch (made instead by Ron Howard), a Forrest Gump sequel (Zemeckis and Hanks shot down Hughes), and his original version of Made in Manhattan (Sandra Bullock).
Since John was already notoriously difficult to work with and no longer enjoyed the golden-box-office he used to, he retired peacefully.
His office closets were always packed with screenplays he's never gotten around to producing - which is a heartache considering the crap that does get made.
The closest we'll get to another new Hughes, is next summer's "Drillbit Taylor" by the Freaks&Geeks creators, which is a teen comedy in the vein of My Bodyguard and Weird Science, based on 70 pages of material that Hughes had written back when he was under a Paramount contract.
This is a fascinating thread. Regarding the deleted scenes from "The Breakfast Club", don't they only exist on a Betamax copy of the film that Hughes has in his personal collection? Weren't the original elements destroyed?
Anyone have any more details on unproduced scripts of his?
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